


The Phoenix

by Queen_Valkyrie



Series: Fake AH Origins [5]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: F/M, Fake AH Crew, GTAV AU, Immortal Fake AH Crew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 15:52:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6664795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queen_Valkyrie/pseuds/Queen_Valkyrie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's the arsonist of the crew. The pyromaniac. The firebird.<br/>And there's little that Lindsay loves more than painting the world red.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Phoenix

After the great war, the world entered the era of the Roaring Twenties, a time of parties and excess and liquor and plenty of organized crime.

And 22-year-old Lindsay Tuggey loved every second of it.

It all started in 1921, when a party she was out ran out of liquor, and her boyfriend volunteered to go pick up some. When they arrived at the speakeasy, a small but well-kept stone building, Lindsay was immediately caught up in conversation with the woman at the counter, a fearsome but elegant-looking lady with pale blonde hair and a myriad of tattoos racing down her arms. And as the older woman told story upon story of her adventures, Lindsay realized this was what she wanted. The excitement, the adrenaline, the danger, the money… All of it sounded too good to be true.

So a day later, Lindsay returned to the speakeasy and volunteered herself as a driver. After all, her father had taught her to drive since she was fourteen, and she had gotten damn good. She could run liquor and, in return, be paid in cold hard cash.

All she asked for was anonymity.

As it turned out, the woman at the counter was the girlfriend of the man who ran the operation. Lindsay rarely spoke to the man himself, but did occasionally have some good conversation with his partner-in-crime, a fellow redhead with a motherly demeanor.

She loved the rush.

She loved it for nearly five years.

But it didn’t last.

It was a cold year, 1926. And on December 28th, the winter storms coated the Texas roads in a thin sheet of black ice.

She was running fast from an annoyingly persistent police car, and, unaware of the slick ice, she took a sharp turn into an alleyway. But her wheels squealed ferociously on the ice, and her car did a full 180 and rammed, headfirst, into the police vehicle.  
…………………

She woke up with a shock and scrambled to her feet.

She figured someone had pulled her from the wreckage, and so she searched frantically for her car. When she found it, it was utterly demolished, as was the cop car. They were twisted around each other in an incomprehensible mess of metal and rubber and glass, and someone was just now attempting to pull the policeman’s body out of his totaled vehicle.

Furrowing her eyebrows, she looked down at her own body.

There wasn’t a single scratch. Not a graze. No blood, no cuts, no burns. Not even a bruise.

And when she saw her employers at the site of the crash, she panicked and ran.  
…………………

She had her suspicions for years, but she didn’t dare test her luck. After the crash, she stole an old car and ran to California, where she was a nobody.

She took a typical job and, on the sideline, continued to run alcohol for local businesses. And she was still damn good. 

It wasn’t until 1931 when she confirmed what she had suspected those past five years.

Her car had broken down in dangerous territory, and a group of thugs had come in and threatened her. She offered them all the booze she was carrying in exchange for her life. They took the liquor. And they promptly fired a round of bullets straight through her chest.

She woke up furious a few blocks away, examined her brand-new blouse which had just been peppered through with bullet holes, and decided it was best to let them be.  
For now.

She didn’t properly pay them back until a few months later, but once she did, she ran again. This time she ran as far as she could think of, and went all the way to the East Coast.

During the Depression and most of the Forties, she lived in Massachusetts, and though she loved the bustling city life and the anonymity that came with the sheer amount of people in the state’s most famous city, she knew she couldn’t stay.

In 1953, she moved to New Jersey and joined a gang.

It was the first time she had ever been an official member of any criminal group. Sure, she had run plenty of alcohol for plenty of people during her Prohibition days, and she had done some freelance work for gangs in Boston, but now she was a proper member. A part of something more substantial.

She was a driver and an arsonist, and she loved every second of it. She knew how to start fires, what substances were best for specific kinds of burns, how to control the fire, when to tame it, when to let it run rampant.

And in ‘54, when the gang hired a local guy as a demolitionist, they worked together constantly. He was all about the noise and the smell and the rubble. She reveled in the light and the heat and the color.

It was after their most stressful and successful heist that he first kissed her.

He had blown out the front of the store as they were leaving, and thundered into the passenger seat of her car. She slammed on the gas and the tires squealed as they ran from the police. A cop car approached them, and he scrambled into the back seat, aimed, and fired his grenade launcher at the vehicle, lighting it up in a blaze of glory.

He let out a cackle and rejoined her in the front, and though she didn’t take her eyes off the road, she could feel his grin spreading wide across his freckled cheeks.

When she pulled into safety in the driveway of their headquarters, they both let out a sigh they had been holding, and he looked over at her in silence.

She glanced his way and saw his auburn eyebrows furrowed, his chocolate eyes glinting with determination.

And he leaned over and kissed her, softer than she was expecting.

It hit her like a tidal wave that _God Almighty, she loved this boy_. And she would have spent eternity with him if she could.

But he died in an apartment fire just over a year later.

So she ran. And she swore to herself that if there was one place she would never go back to, it was New Jersey.  
……………………

It wasn’t until 1986 that she met someone of importance again.

She had gone back to freelancing, and was working just outside of New York City with an unknown crew. The kid who had been hired as the sniper of the job had been on the roof when a police helicopter came and took out the entire top of the building.

She felt bad for him, because he was just a kid, after all, but it didn’t last long. After all, it was a bigger cut for her, right? What did she care of some Hispanic punk whose only skill was killing from a distance?

The answer, of course, was that she didn’t.

That was until she saw him walking the streets of the city not a week later.

He had passed her on the sidewalk, the hood of his purple sweatshirt up, attempting to avoid eye contact with anyone and everyone. And she didn’t really recognize him until his face was out of her sight.

But the scruffy facial hair, the glasses, the hoodie… They were all the same.

“Hey!” She shouted back at him, whipping around. “Hey, kid!”

He ignored her and picked up his pace.

“Hey!” Breaking into a run, she headed straight for him, grabbed his shoulder, and spun him to face her.

“What?” He asked, half-panicked and half-attempting-to-be-nonchalant.

“Oh my god,” She breathed. “You’re alive.”

He repeated himself. “What?”

“Was that your first time? Or was it a long time ago?”

“Woah, lady, what are you _talking_ about?”

“When did you first die?!”

His eyes widened and he stared at her for a few long seconds. “How did you--”

“For god’s sakes, just answer me! When did you first die? How?”

“1957,” He muttered, not breaking eye contact with her. “Puerto Rico. Down on my luck, starving. Tried to mug a guy. Didn’t turn out so hot for me.”

She let out a long sigh and smiled at him, her eyes watering.

“But seriously, how did you know?”

“You got blown up, kid. And it hasn’t been a week, and you’re here, unscathed.”

“I coulda been someone else. How--”

“Because I’m the same, kid. 1926. Running alcohol during Prohibition. Car skidded on black ice, ran dead into a police car. Vehicle totaled. Instantly killed.”

His mouth dropped open and his face flashed through a variety of emotions. Disbelief, pain, recognition, relief, and some form of happiness.

“I didn’t think there was anybody else.”

She grinned at him. “Me neither. I’m Lindsay, by the way,” she added, sticking out her hand. “Lindsay Tuggey.”

“Ray Narvaez,” he smiled, shaking her hand firmly. “Junior.”  
…………………

She and Ray worked together for years until 1992, when they got a job request from a growing gang in Los Santos.

So they took a plane out to California.

The only members of the crew they met were the British kid and the mercenary. The leaders were running the operation from the outside, and they would meet the rest at the designated safe house. They had gotten the money safely, and Ray was on a motorcycle with the Vagabond, headed to the safehouse. Lindsay and the British one had hijacked a plane, and though she had assured him she could fly perfectly well, he had insisted on piloting.

Which had been fine with her until he lost control and accidentally crashed them into the side of a mountain.

When she woke up, the British kid was next to her, and they were face-down in the grass of a nearby backyard.

He groaned and rolled over, but when he saw her next to him, he jolted up.

She did the same.

“You’re--!” They yelled in unison.

“What year?” He insisted.

“1926, you?”

“1599.”

Her mouth dropped open in an incredulous O. “Holy shit.”

“Oh my god,” he breathed. “Is your friend--”

“Yeah, 1957.”

He grinned at her. “Oh my god.”  
……………………………

When she found out that the leader of the Fake AH Crew was her old boss, he was both ecstatic and furious.

“You coulda come back to work, and you didn’t!” He shouted at her, though the grin on his face made him lose any sense of intimidation.

“I saw you at the crash! I didn’t know that you were… y’know. Did you know who I was when you hired me for this job?”

“No!” Geoff insisted, though Jack replied with a “Yes” at the exact same time.

Geoff furrowed his dark eyebrows and placed one hand over his heart. “You _knew_? And you didn’t _tell_ me?”

“There’s a lot of things I don’t tell you,” she smiled, rolling her eyes.

“Like _what_?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“How do you expect me to not worry about it when yo--”

“Lindsay,” Jack interrupted, “Ray. How would you two like to join the Fake AH Crew?”

The partners looked at each other and grinned. “We’d love to.”  
……………………

2004.

“Alright, assholes,” Geoff announced, stepping through the doorway into the penthouse with a triumphant, shit-eating grin plastered across his face. “We’ve got a newbie.”

Ryan furrowed his eyebrows. “Why? We’re great as we are.”

“Ehhh,” Jack disagreed. “We do okay.”

“We get the money, don’t we?”

“Heists aren’t about money, though. At least not with us. Heists are supposed to be fun.”

“Exactly,” Geoff interrupted. “And I’m bringing in a guy who’s totally gonna boost the fun factor way the fuck up.”

“Would we know him?” Ray asked, not looking up from his DS.

“Goes by _Mogar_.”

“Aw shit,” the sniper grinned. “Yeah, I’ve heard of that guy. He’s brutal, man.”

“So he’s, what? A brawler? An extra gun?” Ryan inquired.

“If we need him to be, sure. Most of the time, he’s demolitions.”

“Wot?” Gavin looked up, an incredulous pout on his face. “But I used to be the demolitions guy!”

Geoff rolled his dark blue eyes. “You learned everything you know from WikiHow, Gav.”

“Yeah, and you blow us up on a regular basis,” Lindsay laughed.

Gavin grumbled something unintelligible under his breath and stared at the floor.

“Anyways…” Jack said, attempting to bring the gang back on track.

“Yeah, anyways,” Geoff continued. “Jack’s screened him and everything, so he’s clean. I’m gonna go bring him in.”

The leader opened the door, but looked back to give a pointed glare to Ryan. “Be nice.”

“When aren’t I?”

“To newbies? Try all the time,” Lindsay smirked, raising one scarlet eyebrow.

Geoff threw open the door and smiled. “Everybody, this is Michael Jones.”

Lindsay’s heart nearly stopped.

_It was him._

He had died, and it was him.

He had the same name. The same auburn curls. The same deep-set, coffee-colored eyes. The same freckles thrown across his cheeks.

 _Dear God_ , he even had the same brown leather jacket with that damned wolf on the back.

“Michael,” Geoff continued, “This is everybody.”

He locked eyes with her and gave her a look that screamed, _not possible._

“Lindsay?” Michael breathed, almost a desperate whisper.

She let the moment linger for a little while longer, closed her mouth, gulped, and lifted her chin. “Michael,” she replied.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for teasing you all with that ending. Actually, I do have the whole meeting between Michael and Lindsay written, I'm just not sure where to put it. Should it be in another crew member's backstory? Should it be its own story? I still have no idea. If you guys have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.  
> Thanks so much for reading!


End file.
